Digital Storytelling - Uses of Visual Effects Research

In reading 'Digital Storytelling' by Shilo t. McClean, I have been informed on the categories of visual effects usage. This has made me think about how I am going to go about my practical scenes a bit more.

• Invisible (everything within the shot could be done for real, must be doable. Maybe it's just easier, cheaper or safer to do with visual effects)
• Seamless (audience can’t tell that it is vfx, however, they know it must be. The example the book gives is 1945 Warsaw, the audience knows that they obviously couldn't have filmed there, however it looks convincing.)
• Exaggerated (between real world and extraordinary, often used with comedy and action as pace ramps up. Used to push the boundaries of what is possible)
• Fantastical (something that simply couldn’t be real but made to look it. Alien creatures, magical effects, ect.)

So there may be less of an argument to be made there about if effects are really needed because some elements of the story simply couldn't be shown at all without effects. This means that for my scene without effects, I would have to film it in a very different way altogether.

A solution to this dilemma could be to have a few different effects (the creature being fantastical, other shots having seamless effects that people genuinely could believe are real). This adds a bit more variety to my argument since some effects might not even be noticed so we can see if they actually do change the impact of the story at all.